Dragon fly on light- advice needed!

[mediyoga]

Hi all.
In this case as the object is sitting on the light any advise on proper exposure? The first one is taken with the light falling on the fly from the left of me. The image is horrible.

Next I got a good backlit when I went to the opposite side and below
( image 2 iso 400 1/60 f8 canon 17-85 IS.). The third is a crop of the second. Thanks for all advice :)
Krishna Raman

[24Peter]

Hi Krishna - I'll take a stab at answering your question, but let me start by saying you picked really tough circumstances to get a decent shot. You picked a small relatively dark object against a very bright background. I don't know anyone who could make such a shot work. As they say, I think you need to learn to pick your battles a little better. This is one you ain't gonna win.

Now as you know, photography is in large part about learning how to manage light. Film and to a greater extent digital sensors have a hard time with contrast in an image. The greater the difference between dark and light areas of a photo, the worse the image will probably be. Reason being, if you expose for the highlights, you lose any detail in your shadows. If you expose for the shadows, anything from the midrange on up in the photos like you posted will be blown out. And blown highlights even on the best digital camera look very ugly. Perhaps you know all this in theory, but your photos show it looks when it plays itself out for real.

So, the best way to photograph your dragonfly friend would be to coax him (or her - I have no clue) down off the light and to a darkly colored background that you can then hit with a lot of light from the front. (I guess you could try to balance the brightness of the light by using a flash but I imagine you'd be down around f22 or lower which means you'd need an awfully bright flash.) Some of us might just kill the thing, stick it on a piece of background paper, get out a macro lens and have a party. Killing the little guy may not be acceptable to you, so now your job is doubly hard.

Anyway, kind of a long winded way of saying you probably ain't gonna get the shot on this one. You seem to like challenges, but my suggestion would be to pick easier subjects lest all this photography stuff become a bit disappointing. Hope that helps. :)

[mediyoga]

Hi Peter. Thanks for your reply. I really did pick a tough battle. But I like challenges -maybe I went too far!

"The greater the difference between dark and light areas of a photo, the worse the image will probably be". This makes sense to me , I will keep this in mind.

Well I definitely wont kill it. Coaxing (him or her)--will try to chase her or him around in the hopes of getting a good shot !

One message is technically clear- its not a good choice of a subject like what I did!
thanks
krishna

[ktixx]

Try turning your flash compensation as high as it can go, that way when you take the picture you can make the exposure of the dragon fly equal to the exposure of the light. As said before this is a difficult shot..
Good Luck
Ken

[aparmley]

Yea tough one here. . . The only thing I can offer that the others didn't mention is that if its possible under these circumstances to alter your position relative to the light, it might be your best bet. For instance, instead of shooting the dragonfly with the light as your background try to move so that the light is not in the background - shooting to the side of it so that perhaps you can eliminate the light from the picture and use only the light it is emitting to illuminate the dragon fly. I don't know how sound that theory is as it just came to me when reading your post. Otherwise - blowing the backgroud to get detail in subject, which is the goal here might be a reasonable alternative.

[jwhite]

Here is nother possibility. Less to do with photography tips and more with environment. If you have access to what is on the outside of the window, why not try to cover up the window totally? Then you have no back lighting to deal with and then you can either use a flash or some other source of light from the front. Of course knowing dragonflies, it probably will get scared from all the movement.

[mediyoga]

Thanks to all of you for your kind advice. Love challenges, helps me better myself. Will keep on working
:)